We often think of a real estate agent as someone focused on selling properties. However, there's another side to the equation: listings. An agent or brokerage firm can't sell anything they don't have, and it is not so easy to find homes to sell.
Many US homeowners are hesitant to sell because mortgage rates are rising, making it more expensive to purchase a new home. As a result, they choose to wait, leading to fewer homes on the market and driving up demand and prices. Additionally, 10 percent of homes sold in 2022 were for sale by owner (FSBO) homes, an increase from seven percent in 2021.
The statistics indicate that real estate agents must work harder to win listings. They must convince homeowners to sell and keep their inventories up to give potential buyers more options. This necessitates implementing marketing campaigns to get the attention of sellers and buyers.
Real estate marketing is critical to successful home selling and buying but requires a multifaceted approach. You must do market research, engage and follow up with buyers and sellers through social media, and manage and promote listings.
However, efficiency alone is not enough. The ultimate goal is to establish connections in real estate. You need to find a way to automate manual tasks and streamline workflows without sacrificing personalization. Even with advanced technology, achieving this goal takes time and effort because marketing software and systems don't always work together. This is where a real estate marketing platform comes in.
A real estate marketing platform can make generating more leads easier for real estate professionals. It offers a centralized solution of automation and other tools to maximize the marketing efforts of agents, brokers, and developers. The goal is for small businesses to reach their target audience with the most effective marketing strategy.
Key Takeaways
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A real estate marketing platform provides tools to help real estate professionals manage and promote property listings and sales. It enables users to leverage marketing strategies to reach their target audience and enhance the ROI of their marketing campaigns.
The functionality of a real estate marketing platform can range from all-in-one solutions to specialized email applications. Most include the following features:
Managing a listing database is central to a real estate business as it showcases available properties. A real estate platform typically allows realtors to create and add listings to their websites. They may also offer integration with multiple listing services (MLS) using Internet Data Exchange (IDX) software. This allows for wider listing exposure.
Property listings provide essential information about the property. These include high-quality photos, floor plans, price, location, size, features, and amenities. Other details may be property type, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, year built, and unique features. Some platforms even provide options to create virtual tours and videos.
Lead generation is primarily about creating a buzz around your listings to attract potential buyers. Examples of strategies to generate real estate leads include the following:
A real estate marketing platform enables small businesses to capture and track leads from different channels 24/7. These channels include websites, online ads, mobile apps, and social media. Lead management tools allow real estate professionals to follow up and engage potential sellers and buyers, such as a lead inbox.
Some platforms include website templates and builders specific to the real estate industry. You can create a visually appealing and informative site for your listings to capture leads. They can help with workflows in creating landing pages as well.
Many real estate platforms integrate with website builders for the real estate industry. The most popular include the following:
Many real estate marketing platforms integrate with popular ad platforms and channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads. You can use them to launch and manage targeted ad campaigns to drive traffic to your site and listings.
Direct mail and email marketing strategies have stood the test of time in real estate. They have a high ROI because people tend to engage more with them than with other types of marketing. About 17 percent of recipients open a well-constructed email with a catchy subject line, and about two percent click through the provided links.
Direct mail has a significant edge over email because it is physical. Research shows 90 percent of people open their mail, and 70 percent find it more personal. Additionally, more than half prefer receiving direct mail from brands they know. It may be a handwritten mailer, brochure, or letter targeting homeowners and prospective buyers.
Target mailers may go to homeowners likely to sell or have an FSBO listing to persuade them to work with a real estate agent. Some may send postcards featuring listed or sold properties to homeowners in a specific community, inspiring them to sell their property. With home prices rising, this strategy can be very effective for generating leads.
Real estate marketing platforms typically come with direct mail or email marketing automation tools. You can send automated mailing campaigns to prospects to win listings or sell homes. You can also use these tools to follow up on leads, update listings, and analyze market trends. Direct mailers effectively localize promotions for open houses to convince homebuyers and sellers to act.
Managing marketing campaigns on one platform enables a realtor to gather data and track performance. Performance tracking tools measure the effectiveness of a campaign by analyzing traffic, leads, and conversions.
A real estate marketing platform can offer insights into what marketing strategies work and how to make them better with the following features:
A customer relationship management (CRM) functionality can help real estate professionals manage their prospects and clients more efficiently. You can use it to store client information such as names and telephone numbers. Real estate CRM also allows you to track interactions, set reminders, and schedule appointments.
Some of the most popular CRM for real estate include the following:
Real estate marketing platforms come in various types, and many will have overlapping features. Among these are the following:
Choosing an all-in-one platform might seem like a no-brainer, but that is not always the case. You might need something that does one thing better than others, such as schedule posts. The best type of real estate marketing platform depends on the specific needs of real estate professionals or agencies.
The competition in the real estate industry is high, particularly of late, so effective marketing is essential for success. Many real estate professionals turn to real estate marketing platforms to streamline and enhance their marketing efforts.
These platforms offer tools and features designed specifically for the unique needs of the real estate industry. By leveraging technology and data-driven insights, they provide benefits that can transform marketing strategies and drive business growth.
The main benefit of a real estate marketing platform is having all the information you need in one place. Centralizing property listings help real estate professionals streamline operations and improve the accuracy and consistency of property information. Suppose you make changes to one or more listings. The platform automatically updates the data across all your marketing channels and platforms.
A real estate marketing platform facilitates collaboration in creating and distributing listings on various sites and platforms. It also makes it easier to track all activities for each listing and collect data for market trend analysis. Team members can make informed decisions about their marketing efforts by allowing users to manage listings from a central location. This approach also saves costs and time, helping small businesses reduce administrative overhead.
Most real estate marketing platforms include some form of automation, typically for managing marketing campaigns. Using machine learning for large data sets enhances the effectiveness of marketing efforts, streamlines workflows, and generates more leads.
Automation primarily reduces the time and effort of creating and scheduling social media posts or targeted ads. It also promotes consistency in branding and messaging when using templates and AI-generated content, ensuring a cohesive marketing approach.
An excellent example of an automated campaign is setting up a lead capture form on a real estate website. Once a visitor signs up to get a survey of home prices in the area, it triggers an automated response. It could be a thank you email with a download link or a personalized card with a QR code.
The platform form automatically captures the visitor's information. You can use that for future communication, such as invitations to an open house or a networking event. Following a successful transaction, the system can ask for reviews or testimonials.
These tools can enable realtors to reach more people by deploying campaigns across several platforms at the same time. More importantly, they allow users to target the audience based on the goals of a particular campaign.
Platforms with personalization tools, such as handwritten cards targeting homeowners, can increase customer engagement and conversion. This approach can give real estate professionals an edge over the competition.
Lead generation or farming in real estate means more listings and sales. Real estate professionals are constantly after leads, typically getting them from landing pages, social media, and email subscriptions.
However, generating leads is just one side of the equation. Effective management ensures you can organize prospects according to their stage in the sales funnel. That will allow you to create the appropriate campaign to engage and convert them.
Real estate platforms can help you do both. They have various tools that attract and collect prospect information for inclusion and organization into the database. Strategies may include content marketing, landing page optimization, subscription forms, and online ads. These campaigns can fill up inventory when done correctly. Because these tools automate the lead generation and management process, it is simpler for users to access and use the information.
Suppose a lead repeatedly visits a specific listing on a website, indicating a higher level of interest. The platform alerts the website owner so the realtor can reach out personally, acknowledging the lead's interest and offering personalized assistance. Because the platform has a cohesive view of the lead's interactions, it enables the realtor to make relevant property recommendations.
Marketing campaigns occur on different platforms, such as websites and social media. The basis of decisions in real estate marketing is an analysis of the data for each campaign. The problem is data from various platforms for silos that can keep you from getting actionable insights.
You need to eliminate these silos because ads and other marketing efforts have a cost, and you want to ensure you're not wasting your money. Analytic and reporting tools abound, but a real estate marketing platform combines those with data-gathering features, keeping everything in one place.
Suppose you have two campaigns for the same target audience and want to identify the most effective one. The platform can identify key metrics such as leads generated, conversion rate, cost per lead, engagement, open rate, click-through rate, and customer lifetime value. These metrics translate into return on investment (ROI) for each campaign. You should see these from a platform's dashboard for each campaign.
Most real estate companies use two or more systems for various aspects of the business. Integrating these systems with a real estate platform allows a streamlined data entry, allowing consistency and accuracy in the workflow. It also enhances conversion, customer relationship management, and marketing efficiency. Moreover, it helps a real estate company be more flexible and scalable.
Integrations with software and platforms such as Calendly, Cloze, Sierra Interaction, and Slack can help with manual tasks. Suppose you use a CRM such as Salesforce and want to use a marketing platform like Addressable. Integration makes onboarding of direct mailing functionality quick and seamless.
Did you know? The response rate for direct mail is around 5 percent, compared to 0.6 percent for email. Moreover, 42.2 percent of recipients open and scan any mail they receive.
Competition for residential real estate is fierce, especially in recent years. Technology has made the real estate profession more efficient, producing better results with the right tools.
Real estate marketing platforms have features for automating workflows, generating leads, analyzing data, and providing actionable insights from a central location. They can benefit real estate professionals in practical ways, such as reaching and engaging a larger audience with less time and effort.
However, the real estate market is primarily a local one. The real estate platform you use should help you win listings and generate leads in the community where you operate.
Addressable's affordable plans give you access to patented handwriting technology. This innovative feature can help you reach homeowners in your area and convert them into clients by personalizing your approach. It also allows you to generate custom listings and content for your MLS or site, among other things.
The best part? It's so easy to get started!
Email marketing and similar forms of targeted communication work best for real estate agents because they can personalize it. It is also cost-effective, with an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent.
According to Hootsuite, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are the top three social media platforms for real estate marketing. Surprisingly, LinkedIn comes after TikTok and Pinterest.
Apparently so. A recent survey of real estate professionals indicates that two-thirds (66.6 percent) want to improve their email and CRM marketing campaigns.
